Dustin Granger for Louisiana

Mourning Sportsman's Paradise

Dustin Granger — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:27:50 GMT

SpaceX is coming to Louisiana. Sounds exciting, right? Futuristic. Like maybe, finally, the future is landing somewhere other than Texas or California.

So why does it feel a little off?

Trust that feeling. Because what we’re watching unfold on Pecan Island isn’t economic development. It’s the same story Louisiana has been telling for a hundred years, just with a new billionaire playing the lead.

We’ve done this before. Oil and gas built this state’s economy and then quietly rewrote the rules of who benefits from it. Severance taxes got carved down. Enforcement got hollowed out. And the price showed up in our air, our water, our land, and eventually our bodies. Federal environmental law was supposed to be the backstop. In Louisiana, it became just one more thing to negotiate around.

Jeff Landry didn’t invent this game. He’s just playing it faster than anyone before him. His first move as governor was installing a Secretary of Environmental Quality with no real environmental background and, frankly, no business running the agency meant to protect us. Then came the “reorganization” of the Department of Natural Resources into something new, something even the people covering state government can’t fully explain, and something that has left our coast and our resources less protected, not more.

Then came the data centers. AI companies started signing NDAs with state and local officials, agreements that block elected leaders from telling the voters who put them there what exactly these companies are getting, what they’re using, and what it’s costing the rest of us. The legislature went to work on their behalf this spring, handing out tax breaks and stripping away liability and public records requirements, in the same session that also gutted Black voting power in the old 6th District. Pattern, not coincidence.

Now it’s SpaceX’s turn, and it’s a bigger ask than anything before it.

Landry’s administration has been quietly negotiating to hand over roughly 130,000 acres on Pecan Island, in Vermilion Parish, for a rocket facility. Not research and development. Not manufacturing. A blast pad, the kind Boca Chica, Texas is still fighting over.

Here’s the part that should stop you cold, if it holds up: multiple local outlets report that land is tied to Exxon’s punishment, part of a coastal damages settlement for decades of polluting our marshes. The settlement itself is sealed by court order, so no one outside the deal can independently confirm the details. But if the reporting is right, this was supposed to be the one moment the state actually made an oil company pay for what it broke. Instead, that land may be getting routed straight to Elon Musk. The company blamed for damaging our coast would be helping hand it off to the next one lining up to do it again.

And Pecan Island is about the worst possible place to put it. That stretch of coast has been sinking and washing away for decades, and hurricanes speed it along every year. It sits between two wildlife refuges. It’s some of the best hunting and fishing water left in this state, the kind of place “Sportsman’s Paradise” was supposed to mean something. If this goes through, you can stop pretending coastal restoration is a real priority in Louisiana. We’ll have said the quiet part out loud.

Meanwhile, the legislature already greased the skids this year with tax breaks and liability shields for unnamed “aerospace” companies, exempting them from public records requests, too. So when something goes wrong, and something always eventually goes wrong, you may not have the right to sue, and you may not even have the right to know.

Here’s the thing nobody in Baton Rouge wants to say out loud: we don’t actually know what Musk is getting out of this. We know the eligibility bar for the tax breaks. We don’t know the size of the land deal, the real value of the exemptions, or what happens if the coastal restoration promises don’t get kept. Given how this legislature has handled every other corporate giveaway this year, there’s no reason to assume this one is any cleaner.

Now Trump’s FAA wants to help finish the job, proposing to waive thirteen federal environmental and health laws for launch operations. Clean Water Act. Endangered Species Act. NEPA. All of it, gone, so Elon Musk doesn’t have to deal with “regulatory burden.”

Local officials keep telling us we have to accept this to “compete.” I don’t buy it. A state that can only land these deals by throwing out the rule of law, hiding negotiations behind NDAs, and leaving people with no legal recourse when a rocket company ruins their water or their land, is giving Louisiana away, one 130,000-acre parcel at a time.

I don’t think most Louisianans want this. I think most of us are being told this is a done deal before we’ve even been told what the deal is. That’s worth being angry about, and it’s worth doing something about.

Watch this one closely over the next few weeks. Ask your legislators what they voted for this spring and whether they’ll say so publicly. Ask Senator Hensgens what “coastal restoration” is actually going to mean once the rockets start firing. And if you’re the letter to the editor type, this is exactly the kind of story your local paper needs to hear about from someone other than a lobbyist.

Want to do something about it? FAA comment link: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/30/2026-15415/waiver-of-specified-statutory-requirements-for-commercial-space-launch-and-reentry-actions

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Louisiana, Wake Up. They Are Selling What's Left of Us.

Dustin Granger — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:04:09 GMT

The Louisiana you and I grew up in is about to disappear for good if we don’t do something fast. I’m not being dramatic. I read four stories this week that laid it out plain, and if you put them side by side, you can see exactly what’s happening to this state.

The first was the New York Times investigation (free gift link) into Meta’s data center deal in Richland Parish. Go read the whole thing. It shows how the backroom deals actually get made. Governor Landry personally signed a non-disclosure agreement with Meta’s data center subsidiary. He wasn’t the only one. Nola.com built a running database of every NDA Louisiana officials have signed since 2024, and it’s already tracked at least 54 elected officials tied to deals like this one. Your representative may have signed away the right to tell you what’s happening to your own state.

Here’s the part that should make you furious. In April 2024, a state legislative committee was about to take up a routine bill giving a sales tax exemption to fiber optic equipment. The governor called his revenue secretary, Richard Nelson, a self-described “outspoken critic of tax breaks” who was reportedly planning to speak against this very bill, and told him to get it passed for something else. Nelson walked across the Capitol and told the bill’s own author, “Hey, we need to hijack your bill,” admitting he couldn’t even say what it was really for. The author went along with it. No hearing on the merits. No debate. A phone call, a state official abandoning his own stated principles, and the bill became something else entirely, a vehicle for a much bigger deal nobody outside the room knew was coming. That’s how a $50 billion project gets built in this state. Not through your elected officials representing you. Through a phone call and a hijacked bill.

One of the legislators who helped grease that deal did just fine for himself along the way. State Senator Jay Morris co-wrote a bill that helped land the Meta project and voted yes on the tax rebate. Not long after, he sold 300 acres of his own land to the utility company building the site, after nearby land values shot up from around $3,000 to $5,000 an acre to more than $50,000 an acre. He won’t say how much he made. And when reporters later asked Governor Landry why the whole deal was kept secret from the public in the first place, he didn’t apologize for it. He said people have used the word transparency to basically kill deals like this.

And what did that deal actually cost us? The New York Times reports the tax breaks Louisiana handed Meta could be worth as much as $10 billion. That’s built around a 20-year exemption from state and local sales tax on equipment, and GPUs don’t last. Data centers replace their chips every two to three years, and every time they do, that exemption applies again, which means the real cost over the life of this deal could run well past that $10 billion mark. On top of that, there are property tax breaks that could cost us another billion a year, and federal exemptions stacked on top of all of it.

What could Louisiana do with that kind of money? Put insurance costs back where they were a decade ago. Pay our teachers like we actually value them. Fix the roads and bridges we complain about every single day. Instead, it’s going to a company worth over a trillion dollars, because the people we elected to represent us decided a corporation’s chip inventory mattered more than our schools.

The third story is the one that should scare you most. The Louisiana Illuminator reported that our state is now pitching the federal government to store nuclear waste under the Gulf of Mexico, in salt domes off Port Fourchon. We already know how salt domes hold up under pressure. Ask anyone near Bayou Corne, where a salt dome collapsed into a sinkhole that swallowed part of a town. Our governor wants to turn the coast into a nuclear waste dump to win favor with Washington, on top of everything we already absorb from the petrochemical industry. They think rural Louisiana will go along with anything if you wrap it in a flag and call it jobs.

And the fourth story is where all of it lands. U.S. News and World Report ranked Louisiana the worst state in America to live in, for the fourth year running. Dead last in crime and corrections. Near the bottom in education, infrastructure, and economy. This didn’t happen overnight. This is what four decades of trickle-down economics gets you, the same Reagan-era theory that Bobby Jindal supercharged here by gutting the budget and handing out corporate tax breaks like candy. We are watching the final chapter of a story that started in the 1980s, and it is being written by people who call themselves Republicans while working for the same corporations that are dumping their waste, their toxins, and their tax bills on us.

The people doing this to us are not conservatives in any sense that matters to a working family. They are corporate lobbyists who are good at getting elected, who wave the right flags and win rural votes, then go to Baton Rouge and hijack bills for companies worth more than our entire state budget. They are not there to represent you. They are there to keep the money flowing the other way.

This year and next year are what we’ve got. If we don’t organize, vote, and hold every single one of these people accountable, the Louisiana we knew will be gone, sold off in pieces to whoever calls the governor’s office next. Wake up, Louisiana. Nobody is coming to save us but us.

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Lauren Jewett for Congress on WTH Happened This Week with Danielle and Dustin

Dustin Granger — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:01:19 GMT

Check out Lauren, donate and sign her petition at www.laurenjewett.com

Follow Lauren on facebook, instagram, tiktok, x, bluesky, youtube

Available for iOS and Android

WTH Happened This Week with Danielle and Dustin

Dustin Granger — Fri, 22 May 2026 19:55:15 GMT

Available for iOS and Android

America's Next Phase Has Arrived

Dustin Granger — Fri, 22 May 2026 10:55:40 GMT

Jeff Landry spent millions trying to rewrite Louisiana’s constitution. The voters said no. Five amendments, all of them going down on May 16th, and not even close. Republican policy, when you strip the party label off it and just ask people to vote on the actual idea, loses. Democrats showed up, even when they spent next to nothing in ads. Independents came out swinging. The grassroots beat the machine, and the machine had all the money.

Landry’s response was to leave. The votes were in, the rebuke was complete, and the day after Louisiana spoke he literally packed up and fled the state for a Trump vanity trip to Greenland, a move that is likely illegal since Louisiana law bars the governor from holding any other office or position. Instead of facing the voters who just rejected everything he pushed, Landry was overseas getting jeered by Greenland residents, picking fights with journalists, and trying to lure local kids to his residence with cookies. The man could not get out of Louisiana fast enough. It would be funny if it were not so telling. This is what running from accountability while embarassing our state looks like.

Back home, the picture keeps getting worse. Republican officials in Louisiana hold every card. The governorship, the legislature, the courts, every lever of state power. They own this. There is no one else to blame and nowhere else to point. Landry’s approval is sinking. Trump’s numbers are falling. Bipartisan coalitions are forming around carbon capture opposition, around voting rights, around the simple idea that Louisiana’s government is not working for Louisiana’s people. These are not activists. These are your neighbors. And they are moving with almost no money, which is exactly what terrifies the people who have all of it.

What Landry and the GOP is selling does not look dangerous on the surface. “100 billion in investment.” Data centers. Carbon capture. Tax cuts. It sounds like prosperity. What nobody explains is who actually pays for the “investment” and who collects the profit. The people pay, through subsidies, through tax breaks carved out for corporations, through utilities climbing while wages sit still. The out-of-state shareholders collect. The politicians collect their cut in the form of continued power. This is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. It has always been the system.

And they know it is slipping. You do not move to restrict independent voters when you are winning the argument. You do not gerrymander harder when the people are with you. You do not ram unpopular policy through at midnight when you feel secure in your position. And they are still scrambling to lock in structural advantages before the public catches up to them completely. That tells you everything about what they see coming.

Here is what they do not want you to see.

The civil rights movement was never only about Black people. It was about Black people most urgently, most visibly, and at the greatest cost, because Black people have carried the heaviest burden of what this country built. But the fight itself has always been larger than that, and understanding that is the key to understanding this moment.

Start in 1776. The country had to invent what a citizen even was. Who counts. Who has rights. Who gets a say in their own governance. The answer they started with was narrow and ugly, but the idea they put on paper was genuinely radical. Government gets its power from the people. Not from kings. Not from inherited wealth. Not from the ownership of other human beings. From the people. That sentence started an argument that is still going.

Everything since then has been the slow, painful, contested expansion of who “the people” actually includes. Women fought their way in. Black Americans fought their way in and are still fighting. Working people of every background have been in this fight, sometimes without knowing it, because the forces working against them have always been the same forces. Concentrated money. Concentrated power. And the move those forces make every single time they feel the ground shifting is division. Turn one group of working people against another. Make white workers fear Black progress. Make rural communities fear cities. Keep everyone looking sideways so nobody looks up.

Slavery was not only a moral catastrophe. It was an economic system, and it required the invention of racial hierarchy to keep itself justified. When it ended, the people who had built fortunes on it needed a new strategy. They built one. Jim Crow. Segregation. The systematic underdevelopment of Black communities, and then the use of that engineered poverty as supposed proof that Black people were less deserving. It was a lie constructed on a wound they made sure never healed.

The modern version of that same trick is the idea that corporations are people. Think about what that means. The same legal tradition that once ruled Black Americans were not full citizens later decided that a business entity, a holding company, an LLC, a shell, deserves the rights of a citizen. That did not happen by accident. Concentrated money needed a legal shield, and it got one. Same game, new name.

Here is what they have always known and never wanted the rest of us to figure out. When you lift the floor for the people who have been kept the lowest, the floor rises for everyone. Better schools in Black communities mean better schools, period. Higher wages for the most exploited workers pull wages upward across the board. Less poverty means less crime, less pressure on public systems, more money moving through local economies. It is not a new idea. Louisiana has seen it before, in the rare moments when its leaders actually chose the people over the powerful. Those moments did not last long. The machine always found a way to reassert itself. But the proof of concept exists in our own history.

The civil rights movement was always the American story. It is the story of regular people taking back control from concentrated power, one painful inch at a time. What we are watching right now, in Louisiana and across the country, is the next chapter of that same story starting to write itself.

And if you are white in Louisiana, this is your fight too. The insurance premiums you cannot afford. The school your kid goes to that does not have what it needs. The hospital that closed in your parish. The wages that have not moved while everything else has gone up. The utility bill that keeps climbing while the company files record profits. None of that is an accident, and none of it is your Black neighbor’s fault. It is the result of a political arrangement that has spent generations making sure working people in Louisiana, Black and white, never build enough collective power to demand something different.

People sometimes ask why race keeps coming up. Because it is real. Pretending it is not does not make it go away. It just lets the people who benefit from it keep benefiting, quietly, while the rest of us argue about everything except the thing that matters. Seeing it clearly is not divisive. It is the beginning of actually fixing what is broken. And what is broken is breaking all of us.

The next phase was always coming, and Louisiana has always been where America works out its hardest fights. The worst of what this country built took root here. The most important battles for human dignity have been fought on this soil. That is not a coincidence. It is a calling. The question is whether enough of us are ready to finish what 250 years of history has been pointing toward.

Catch me on the latest Lousiana Anthology Podcast #677

The Louisiana GOP's "Totally Not Racist" War on Black Citizens

Dustin Granger — Tue, 12 May 2026 11:08:56 GMT

In recent history, conservative Republicans and MAGA world have been telling us that people throw the word racist around too much. The country moved on after the Civil Rights Movement. Racism isn’t much of a problem anymore, and if anything, all this focus on race is the real discrimination. Reverse racism, they call it. Racism against white people. Saying you don’t see color sounds noble until you realize what it actually does. In a country built on racial inequality, willful blindness isn’t neutrality. It’s a shield for the people who benefit from keeping things exactly as they are.

So now, as they erase Black representation across the South, they insist it isn’t racist. It’s just partisan. And being partisan, the Supreme Court has already decided, is perfectly legal and constitutional. They are removing the little Black leadership we have, leadership that was already scarce, and telling us that’s not racism. So the question has to be asked. What is racism if not that? What would it have to look like before they’d call it what it is?

Photo credit Javier Gallegos, The Advocate. The only Black Congresspeople ever elected in Louisiana: U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson and U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, left to right.

The Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the Callais case, gutting what remained of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The conservative majority decided that drawing congressional districts to give Black voters proportional representation, in a state where Black people make up over 30% of the population, is itself discriminatory. Here’s what that actually means. The Court has said you can’t use race to protect Black voters, but you can use partisanship to hurt them. In Louisiana, where Black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic, those two things are functionally the same. The Court has told Black voters that the remedy for discrimination is to vote for the party doing the discriminating. This will go down as one of the worst civil rights decisions in the history of this country.

This didn’t happen overnight. This was a plan, decades in the making. The people who fought the Voting Rights Act in 1965 never accepted it as settled. They built a machine. A billion-dollar legal and political operation chipping away at it court case by court case. Chief Justice John Roberts has been working toward this outcome since he was a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department. This ruling is the culmination of his career project.

Justice Kagan’s dissent lays out exactly how this works. States didn’t need open violence to take the Black vote away after Reconstruction. They used law. Poll taxes. Literacy tests. Good character exams. All facially race-neutral. All devastating. Louisiana took Black registered voters from 130,000 in 1896 down to 1,342 by 1904. Using laws that never once mentioned race. That’s the playbook. It has never changed. The Voting Rights Act was built to stop it. It worked. So states adapted again, cramming Black voters into as few districts as possible or splitting their communities so their votes are always swamped. You can still vote. Your vote just doesn’t count. There’s a phrase for that. Taxation without representation. It’s one of the reasons this country exists.

Since Reconstruction, Louisiana has sent over 171 white men to Congress. It wasn’t until 1991, 250 years into American history, that William Jefferson became the first Black person elected to Congress from Louisiana since Reconstruction. Only four Black people have ever held a congressional seat from this state. Four, in a state that is one third Black. And not a single Black candidate has ever been elected to statewide office. Not one. The Voting Rights Act is the only reason that changed at the congressional level. And now they are actively working to make sure it never happens again. With this ruling, roughly half of Black state legislators in Louisiana could lose their seats. Half of Black America lives in the South. Stripping Black people of representation here isn’t a regional issue. It is taking away the seat at the table for half of Black America.

This was a trap, set deliberately. I remember the 2021 redistricting roadshows. Republican lawmakers traveled the state, held hearings, pretended to listen. Black communities showed up demanding fair districts. They were ignored. Republicans drew maps giving Black voters only one of six congressional districts. Courts found the maps violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered a second majority-Black district drawn. Rather than comply, they ran to the Supreme Court to stop it. Gov. Jeff Landry and AG Liz Murrill filed eight pages arguing it was too close to the election to change the maps. The Supreme Court agreed. Louisiana ran the 2022 elections under maps a court had already found to be illegal. Two more years of stolen Black political power, bought with legal arguments they would later throw in the trash.

When courts finally forced a redraw in 2024, the legislative Black caucus brought maps that could have held up in court. They were dismissed. Republicans drew the new 6th District knowing it would be challenged, designed to take down Section 2 entirely. Three birds, one stone: stall with bad maps, gut the Voting Rights Act, and take out Garrett Graves, a Republican rival of Governor Landry. It worked. They bought four years. That was the plan. And Liz Murrill spent millions in Louisiana taxpayer dollars on outside right-wing lawyers for five straight years to make it happen. Not to build roads. Not to fund schools. Millions to make sure Black Louisianans had less representation. That’s where the money went.

This is why Louisiana is last in everything. Education. Poverty. Health outcomes. Infrastructure. Convince white working-class voters that government programs are just unfair handouts to Black people, cut the programs, and watch the money flow to tax cuts for the wealthy who fund the politicians running the dog whistle. It doesn’t just hurt Black Louisianans. It hollows out the entire state. Poor white families, rural communities, small towns, everyone pays the price. The race dog whistle is the most expensive con job in Louisiana history and we’ve been falling for it for 150 years.

What followed Reconstruction is a history most of us who grew up here were never shown. There is a book called “Without Sanctuary” that documents the Jim Crow era in photographs. Mutilated bodies. Public burnings. Much of this happened 60 to 100 years ago. Your grandparents’ lifetime. That terror left a mark that doesn’t disappear because we stopped putting it in the textbooks. That history never fully went away. It evolved. It learned to wear a suit and file briefs.

The Voting Rights Act didn’t fail. We failed to protect it. Our civil rights elders weren’t speaking in hyperbole when they said the work is never done. It didn’t feel urgent when they said it. It does now. The rights being stripped away right now were paid for in blood, and the people taking them are counting on us being too comfortable to fight the way our predecessors fought. We can’t afford to be.

Nobody is coming to save us. History doesn’t send reinforcements. We have to become them. The Deep South is not a lost cause. It is the key. Half of Black America lives here and we have been fighting alone and underfunded for 250 years while the rest of America watched. That has to change. We need organizers. We need resources. We need the rest of this country to recognize that Louisiana is the frontline, not a footnote.

Vote no on the constitutional amendments this weekend. Organize for the midterms and the 2027 Louisiana governor and legislative elections. Whoever controls this state in 2027 draws the maps after the 2030 census. This is the window. Rallies. Recalls. Precinct organizers. Revived local parties. Boycotts. Look hard at the corporations getting tax cuts from these politicians and funding them in return. Find out who they are. Shine a light on them. Hit them where it hurts. It has to be sustained, it has to grow, and it has to start now.

America cannot be fixed unless we fix it here first. We know that. We have always known that. As Benjamin Franklin said when everything was on the line, we must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

The old Louisiana isn’t back. It never left. But neither did we. Now let’s fight like it.

Catch me on the latest Lousiana Anthology Podcast #677

677. This week, we talk to Dustin Granger about Louisiana politics. As a seasoned financial advisor with over two decades of experience, Dustin Granger has built his career helping Louisiana families navigate the turbulent waters of the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the recurring hurricanes that shape life on the Gulf Coast. A lifelong resident and LSU alumnus, Granger now serves as the Treasurer of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Granger is a leading voice for economic reform and climate resilience. He advocates for a “New Louisiana” that breaks away from traditional corporate-heavy investments to embrace renewable energy, fair taxation, and sustainable infrastructure. In this interview, we discuss his recommendations for the current voting season, his strategies for stabilizing property insurance, his commitment to strengthening the state’s middle class, and his ongoing work to revitalize the Democratic infrastructure across the Bayou State.

Click to listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or here

Conrad Cable for Congress on WTH Happened This Week with Dustin and Danielle

Dustin Granger — Fri, 01 May 2026 19:18:34 GMT

Check out Conrad’s website to donate and volunteer for his campaign for U.S. Congress in Louisiana’s 4th District against Speaker Mike Johnson.

https://www.conrad4congress2026.com/

Available for iOS and Android

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John Day for Congress on WTH Happened This Week with Dustin and Danielle

Dustin Granger — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:54:11 GMT

Check out John Day’s website to donate and volunteer for his campaign for U.S. Congress in Louisiana’s 3rd District against Clay Higgins.

https://johndayforcongress.com/

Follow John Day on social:

Available for iOS and Android

WTH Happened This Week with Rubia Garcia for Congress LA-5

Dustin Granger — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:14:22 GMT

Check out Rubia Garcia’s website to donate and volunteer for her campaign for U.S. Congress in Louisiana’s 5th District: https://www.rubiagarcia.com/

Viral video we spoke about:

Follow Rubia Garcia on social:

Thanks for reading Dustin Granger for Louisiana! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Available for iOS and Android

Spring Market Check: Red Flags Turning Into Alarm Bells

Dustin Granger — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:05:36 GMT

In my day job, I’m a 22-year veteran of the financial advisory industry, a Certified Financial Planner™, and co-owner of Generation Wealth. I spend most of my time helping clients navigate investment markets while also thinking through the political and economic forces shaping those markets. These are conversations I have every day, and from time to time I bring them here to share a broader perspective.

At the start of 2025, I laid out a balanced view of the economy. We had real tailwinds—strong consumer spending, a resilient labor market, and the early impact of AI—but there were also clear risks building in the background. Tariffs, immigration policy, and geopolitical instability weren’t getting much attention at the time, but they had the potential to change things quickly.

For a while, the stock markets focused on the positives. That worked. AI carried valuations higher, consumers kept spending, and the economy held together better than most expected.

But sitting here now in 2026, the tone is changing. The risks I outlined aren’t theoretical anymore. They’re starting to show up, and more importantly, they’re starting to interact with each other in ways that make the system more fragile.

Stock Markets Are Still Betting on Optimism

One of the more interesting dynamics right now is that stock markets still don’t seem to fully believe these risks will play out. There’s a growing assumption that when policies get too aggressive, they’ll be walked back before real damage is done—the TACO: “Trump Always Chickens Out” mindset that’s quietly embedded in pricing.

That thinking has held up so far, but it’s not something you can rely on indefinitely. At some point, either the policy follows through or it goes far enough to matter. When that happens, markets don’t adjust slowly. It tends to happen all at once.

It’s also worth noting that while stock markets have remained relatively stable, other areas like gold and precious metals and credit markets have been telling a different story, reflecting rising uncertainty underneath the surface.

The Economy Beneath the Surface

On the surface, the economy still looks relatively stable. Underneath, it’s becoming more fragile.

Job creation has slowed dramatically and, by some measures, has been essentially flat over the past year. That’s an alarming signal this late in an economic cycle.

At the same time, the structure of the workforce has shifted. There’s more contract work, more gig labor, and less stability than we’ve had in prior cycles. That works fine when everything is moving in the right direction, but it doesn’t hold up well under pressure.

Companies are already leaning on AI as a reason to reduce headcount. No one wants to go first, but once layoffs begin in a meaningful way, they tend to build on themselves.

Tariffs, Inflation, and the Fed Trap

Tariffs are now having the kind of impact I warned about last year.

They function as a direct tax on the economy, raising costs for businesses and ultimately for consumers. Many of these tariffs have been legally challenged and declared unconstitutional, but in the meantime they are costing millions of Americans thousands of dollars per year unnecessarily.

We had made real progress in 2024 on inflation coming down, and that trend has reversed. Tariffs are a key reason why.

That’s putting the Federal Reserve in a difficult position. Rates are likely higher than they need to be based on economic conditions, but inflation isn’t cooperating, so the Fed is stuck.

On top of that, we’re now seeing renewed political pressure on the Fed’s independence. If that pressure leads to premature rate cuts, it risks reigniting inflation even further. That’s a dangerous combination—policy pushing inflation up while also pushing for lower rates at the same time.

AI Is Carrying the Market—With Hidden Risks

AI has clearly been the strongest part of this cycle. It’s real, and it’s driving productivity and stock market performance.

But there’s a second layer to it that deserves more attention.

AI requires massive infrastructure—data centers, energy, water, and financing. Much of that buildout is being supported by private credit and interconnected capital between other AI companies, creating a higher valuation mirage.

Systems like that work well when everything is expanding, but they don’t need a major shock to create stress. They just need something to go slightly wrong and public opinion is now changing swiftly on the drawbacks of data centers near communities.

Private Credit and Growing Debt Risks

Private credit is one of the more underappreciated risks in the system right now.

In simple terms, private credit is lending that happens outside of traditional banks—large investment firms and funds making loans directly to companies, real estate projects, and infrastructure. It has grown rapidly because it operates with fewer constraints than the traditional banking system.

That growth has raised concerns. Analysts are increasingly sounding alarms that parts of this market are becoming overextended and difficult to unwind—a structure that can look stable until it isn’t.

At the same time, the vast majority of Americans are also taking on more debt, from credit cards to auto loans to housing costs. That combination—rising consumer debt alongside growing leverage in private markets—is not something to ignore.

We’ve seen how credit cycles play out before. In 2008, problems in one part of the credit system spread and brought down much larger parts of the financial system, including large insurance companies.

The fact that major areas of growth, including AI and data center expansion, are being financed within this same ecosystem should at least raise some caution.

A K-Shaped Economy

What we’re seeing now is a clear K-shaped economy.

A relatively small portion of the population—primarily the top 10% of income earners—is driving a disproportionate share of consumer spending. Meanwhile, consumption for the majority of Americans is flat or declining as they deal with higher costs and tighter budgets.

At the same time, wealth inequality has reached extreme levels. The top 1% now holds more wealth than the bottom 90% combined, surpassing levels seen during some of the most unequal periods in modern history.

That kind of imbalance creates pressure. Economic pressure turns into political pressure, and over time that instability feeds back into markets.

War, Geopolitics, Energy, and the Dollar

Global tensions are rising again, and the situation with Iran is now playing a major role.

In the short term, the Iran conflict has actually strengthened the U.S. dollar. As global energy markets tighten, the world becomes more reliant on U.S. energy production, and oil continues to be priced in dollars. That reinforces the petrodollar system and has temporarily supported the dollar while slowing the rise in gold.

But that support may come with consequences.

When geopolitical conflict reshapes global trade flows, it also accelerates long-term shifts. Countries that feel exposed to U.S. policy decisions begin looking for alternatives. If tensions escalate further and pull in larger players like China, that process could speed up.

The U.S. has benefited enormously from the dollar being the world’s reserve currency for decades. If that status erodes over time, it could lead to a very different global economic order—one where the U.S. has less control and fewer built-in advantages than it has today.

Debt and Confidence

When I talk about U.S. national debt, I’m not talking about it the way it’s usually discussed politically.

The national debt is the total amount the U.S. government has borrowed, and it also represents assets held by investors, institutions, and foreign governments. It’s a core part of how the global financial system functions.

On its own, that isn’t the problem. The U.S. has been able to sustain high levels of debt because the world trusts the system—our currency, our markets, and our alliances.

Where it becomes a problem is if that confidence starts to weaken.

If growth slows, inequality rises, and global trust begins to erode—especially alongside any shift away from the dollar as the reserve currency—demand for U.S. debt could fall. That would push borrowing costs higher and turn something manageable into a real constraint over time.

Strategic Positioning

From a portfolio standpoint, this is not a time for big emotional moves, but it is a time to be more intentional.

We’ve been raising cash in portfolios. That’s not about calling a top—it’s about having flexibility. Cash cushions volatility and gives us the ability to take advantage of opportunities if markets move lower.

We’re also rebalancing. Markets have had a strong run, and when valuations are elevated and risks are increasing, it’s a good time to consider lowering equity exposure and increasing fixed income.

At the same time, gold and other precious metals can play a role as a hedge against uncertainty, inflation pressure, and a weakening dollar.

Different asset classes behave differently in different environments, and that matters more now than it has in a while.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think this is a moment to panic, but it is a moment to pay attention.

There are more moving pieces than usual, and they’re starting to line up in ways that increase risk. I’ve been through enough cycles to know you don’t wait for everything to break before you adjust.

You make changes when you can see the pressure building.

Right now, the pressure is building.

-Dustin Granger, CFP®

On behalf of and I, we’d like to cordially invite you to our upcoming free, live workshop: Financially Preparing for the Fall of Democracy.

Details:

When: Tuesday, April 21st at 12pmCST
Where: Zoom
Hosts: Danielle Nava, CFP® and Dustin Granger, CFP®

All registrants will receive the recording, so don’t worry if you can’t make it live.

In this session, we’ll walk you through:

What’s actually happening in the economy (without the noise)
What we’re looking out for & what we’re hopeful for
How to think about your cash, investments, and long-term plan in uncertain times
A behind-the-scenes look at the customized shifts we’re making in client portfolios and why
Simple steps you can take immediately to feel more calm, prepared, and in control

REGISTER HERE:

Disclosures:

Securities offered through LPL Financial. Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through NewEdge Advisors, LLC, a registered investment adviser. NewEdge Advisors, LLC, doing business as Generation Wealth, are separate entities from LPL Financial.

This presentation is for educational purposes only and should not be considered individualized investment advice. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Any strategies discussed may not be suitable for all investors.

You're Invited: Financially Preparing for the Fall of Democracy Workshop {free!}

Dustin Granger — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:36:02 GMT

On behalf of and I, we’d like to cordially invite you to our upcoming free, live workshop: Financially Preparing for the Fall of Democracy.

Details:

When: Tuesday, April 21st at 12pmCST
Where: Zoom
Hosts: Danielle Nava, CFP® and Dustin Granger, CFP®

All registrants will receive the recording, so don’t worry if you can’t make it live.

In this session, we’ll walk you through:

What’s actually happening in the economy (without the noise)
What we’re looking out for & what we’re hopeful for
How to think about your cash, investments, and long-term plan in uncertain times
A behind-the-scenes look at the customized shifts we’re making in client portfolios and why
Simple steps you can take immediately to feel more calm, prepared, and in control

REGISTER HERE:

Hope to see you soon!

- Dustin and

P.S. We’ll share more about how to work with us 1:1, but if you’re not quite ready for personalized advice, we’ll also share a few tools and resources you can use to start organizing your money on your own.

Disclosures:

We need to save ourselves from the SAVE Act

Dustin Granger — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:06:09 GMT

Republicans in Congress are pushing a bill designed to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote — or even register. They’re calling it the “SAVE America Act.” Don’t believe it.

Historian Dr. Heather Cox Richardson made an important distinction: the SAVE Act is a proof of citizenship law, not a voter ID law. A voter ID law asks you to show ID at the polls. The SAVE Act demands a passport, birth certificate, or citizenship papers just to register — or re-register — to vote. Those documents cost money. A passport runs at least $165. A certified birth certificate costs $10 to $50. Replacing a lost naturalization certificate? $1,385. There’s a word for making citizens pay to participate in their own democracy. It’s called a poll tax. The 24th Amendment banned it. Mike Johnson is bringing it back with a new name.

(photo credit: Southern Poverty Law Center)

Here’s what makes it worse: Americans already prove citizenship when they register. You sign a sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, that you are a citizen. Lying on it is a federal crime. The system already has teeth. The SAVE Act doesn’t strengthen it — it buries eligible voters under a paperwork mountain instead. When Kansas tried a similar requirement, it blocked roughly 31,000 eligible citizens from registering — about 12% of all applicants — far more real voters than noncitizens.

The Brennan Center for Justice found that 21 million Americans lack easy access to the documents the SAVE Act requires. Roughly 64% of them were already registered and had voted in the previous national election. These aren’t people who haven’t been paying attention. They’re your neighbors, your coworkers, your family members.

Women get hit especially hard. About 69 million married women have a last name that doesn’t match their birth certificate — a simple fact of life that the SAVE Act turns into a bureaucratic nightmare. They’d also need a marriage certificate to prove their name change is legitimate. One document becomes three. And if any of them are missing or inconsistent, you’re out.

So what’s the justification? The same tired lies about rampant voter fraud and illegal voting that Trump and Republicans have been peddling for years. Louisiana’s own Republican Secretary of State just blew that argument apart from the inside. A review of our state’s 2.96 million registered voters found 403 noncitizens on the rolls — and only 83 had voted at least once, going all the way back to the 1980s. The SAVE Act is a fix for a problem that doesn’t exist — and it’s causing real harm to real voters in the process.

Newer versions go even further — banning mail-in voting outright and forcing a purge of voter rolls every 30 days. Purges have long been used to quietly remove legitimate citizens without their knowledge. All of this creates chaos for election officials and voters alike. Not by accident.

Here’s what Republicans won’t say out loud: they’re cornered. Americans aren’t warming up to their agenda on healthcare, wages, or the economy. Rather than offer policies people actually want, their best move is to shrink the electorate. The SAVE Act is the strategy of a party that has given up on persuasion and is betting everything on obstruction.

It’s also part of a broader effort to dismantle free and fair elections — Trump’s FBI seizing voting records in Fulton County, the DOJ demanding states hand over voter rolls, the endless recycling of 2020 lies. These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re a coordinated campaign to keep Trump and the GOP in power regardless of what voters want.

Louisiana’s Republican Congressional delegation isn’t just along for the ride. They’re leading the charge.

We need to save ourselves from the SAVE Act. And from the people pushing it.

WTH This Week with Gary Crockett for U.S. Senate

Dustin Granger — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:26:58 GMT

Check out crockettforlouisiana.com to donate and volunteer for Gary Crockett’s campaign for U.S. Senate

Available for iOS and Android

The MONEY Amendments

Dustin Granger — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 11:14:41 GMT

Five constitutional amendments will appear on the May 16 ballot, scheduled conveniently alongside Louisiana’s closed-party congressional primaries. Last year, four amendments were placed on a similarly low-turnout ballot.

Governor Jeff Landry and Republican legislative leaders already have their talking points ready—and several million dollars in PAC money lined up to sell these amendments to the public.

But watch carefully. They are not campaigning equally for all five amendments.

Just like last year, when their political machine focused almost entirely on Amendment 2, this year the real focus appears to be on Amendments 3 and 4.

The reason is simple. These are the money amendments.

(photo credit Doug Chayka, Brennan Center for Justice)

Money has become the true heart of the Republican Party. Not money for you—but money for the wealthy donors and corporations who fund campaigns and expect the legislature to deliver more in return.

That isn’t speculation. Just look at where the millions in PAC contributions are coming from. Those donors are also the ones who stand to benefit the most.

The operation is so important that the governor’s own chief of staff left his position to run the multimillion-dollar PAC promoting these amendments.

Amendment 3 would unlock roughly $2 billion from education trust funds—money originally set aside for classrooms and long-term investment in our schools—and redirect it into the state’s general budget. Supporters promise teacher pay raises, but draining those funds removes the long-term protections that were meant to preserve them. In effect, it raids money intended for future students in order to patch today’s budget.

And let’s be clear about one thing: Louisiana does not need to raid our children’s education funds to pay our teachers. We can support our schools without rewriting the constitution to drain savings meant for future students.

Amendment 4 restructures parts of Louisiana’s tax system in ways that weaken existing protections for local government revenue while shifting more financial risk onto parishes and local taxpayers. It is also part of the same larger corporate tax-cut strategy: reduce what big business owes, then force everyone else to absorb the damage when the revenue disappears.

Together, these amendments loosen constitutional guardrails that protect Louisiana’s treasury and taxing capacity.

And they are being rushed through before the public fully realizes what is coming.

Louisiana is entering a fiscal crisis after years of corporate tax cuts that drained state revenue. Instead of reversing those policies, the legislature is now scrambling for ways to keep the system going.

We have seen this story before. Under Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s higher education system was pushed to the brink while public assets were treated as something to sell off in the name of trickle-down promises.

Many Republican politicians genuinely believe those promises. They are true believers in trickle-down economics. It is the only way to square the moral circle of wielding tremendous political power while serving the interests of big money.

But prosperity for ordinary people doesn’t come from serving the wealthy first. It comes from leaders willing to stand up to them.

If Louisiana wants a better future, we cannot keep letting politicians rewrite the rules every time their economic model fails. At some point, the people of this state have to say no—not just to these amendments, but to the entire scam of gutting public strength to serve private power.

Dustin is a financial advisor and Certified Financial Planner with over 20 years of experience guiding Louisiana families as co-owner of Generation Wealth. A lifelong resident of Louisiana and LSU alumnus, he is also a proud #girldad. Dustin ran for Louisiana State Treasurer in 2023, bringing in more votes than any other statewide Democratic candidate, though he was ultimately unsuccessful. He has since focused on strengthening the Louisiana Democratic Party, having been elected Treasurer in 2024 and serving on the State Central Committee. As a delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention and a frequent commentator on social media and local TV networks, Dustin holds leaders accountable and champions progressive solutions for a revitalized Louisiana.

WTH This Week with Nick Albares for U.S. Senate

Dustin Granger — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 20:31:13 GMT

Thank you , , and many others for tuning into my live video with and !

Check out https://www.nickforlouisiana.com/ to donate and volunteer for Nick Albares’s campaign for U.S. Senate

Available for iOS and Android

Gov. Landry's Session Priority is "the Business Climate." What About Us?

Dustin Granger — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:46:38 GMT

With legislative session approaching, Governor Jeff Landry and Republican legislators have begun their press tour. When asked about their top priority for the upcoming session, the answer has been consistent: improving Louisiana’s “business climate.”

Not insurance premiums that have doubled for many families. Not utility bills that keep climbing. Not grocery costs. Not teacher pay. Not public schools that remain underfunded. Not higher education that grows more expensive each year. Not hospitals on the brink. Not people losing healthcare coverage. Not roads and bridges. Not small businesses squeezed by higher costs and uncertainty. The focus is the business climate.

For decades, this has been the central promise of Republican control in Louisiana: Cut taxes and regulations for corporations. Make the state more attractive to industry. Companies will invest. Jobs will follow. Revenue will expand. Prosperity will eventually reach everyone else.

It was always framed as a trade. Help business first, and citizens will benefit soon after.

But something has shifted. They don’t even pretend much anymore that improving the business climate is simply a path to helping families. It has become the end itself. The system now produces politicians who openly represent the “business climate,” not the people living in it. The promise that this will all somehow lift regular Louisianans feels thinner every year.

Louisiana has spent generations subsidizing large industries, offering exemptions and tax breaks in the name of growth. The companies most eager for those incentives are often the ones best at extracting value—taking public subsidies, generating profits, and leaving communities with the long-term costs. Pollution, underfunded infrastructure, and a narrow economic base are not accidents. They are the result of a model that routes public dollars upward first and assumes the benefits will drift back down.

Governor Landry recently said families will feel like they “won the lottery” when they see their tax refunds this year, pointing to roughly $500 in savings from income tax cuts. That is the lottery, apparently. Five hundred dollars, at a time when insurance premiums have risen by thousands, utilities are higher, groceries cost more, healthcare coverage is becoming harder to keep, and college tuition continues to rise.

And that’s before factoring in the new tariffs coming out of Washington — a policy Republicans fully support — which will drive prices higher still. Families are paying more at the store while politicians congratulate themselves on economic strategy.

Yes, personal income taxes were reduced. But the largest dollar benefits went to those with the highest incomes. Wealthier Louisianans are saving thousands. Corporate income tax rates were reduced further. The corporate franchise tax was eliminated last year, costing the state hundreds of millions annually. And this May, voters will be asked to approve constitutional amendments that would further weaken or restructure the corporate inventory tax — another roughly $500 million revenue stream that currently supports local governments, schools, and public safety.

Small businesses generally do not pay the corporate income tax; large corporations do. So when corporate rates are cut, it is not the local shop owner benefiting most. And when major revenue streams like the franchise tax disappear — and potentially the inventory tax next — local governments either raise sales taxes or cut services to compensate. While the state sales tax rate may be technically low, the combined state and local rate in many Louisiana parishes is among the highest in the country. The burden shifts downward.

When a reporter asked whether higher sales taxes would offset income tax savings, the governor bristled. He noted that he only controls the state portion, not local rates. But local rates rise precisely because the state has reduced its own revenue streams. When hundreds of millions of dollars are removed from the state’s balance sheet through corporate tax cuts and constitutional changes, someone else has to fill the gap. That someone is not Exxon. It is families at the register.

All of this is unfolding as Louisiana approaches a structural fiscal gap in the coming years (“the state’s overall bottom line shifts from a modest surplus in fiscal 2026 to a projected $2.1 billion deficit in 2029”) and federal dollars become less certain. Instead of preparing families, stabilizing public schools, and protecting healthcare access, Republican leadership is locking in permanent corporate tax reductions and asking voters to enshrine more of them in the constitution this May.

Louisiana does not have a business climate problem. It has a representation problem.

As session begins and the campaign for the May amendments ramps up, families across this state are asking a question that no economic development slogan can answer:

What about us?

What can you do to help change Louisiana?

WTH Happened with week with Special Guest Jamie Davis for U.S. Senate

Dustin Granger — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:19:45 GMT

Connect and contribute to Jamie Davis’s campaign for U.S. Senate at jamieforlouisiana.com. Follow him on all the socials at “@jamieforlouisiana”

Subscribe now

Available for iOS and Android

Tariffs Are Taxes — And Louisiana Is Paying the Price

Dustin Granger — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 12:48:32 GMT

The U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled that one set of Trump’s tariffs were illegal.

The reason is simple: the Constitution gives Congress — not the President — the authority to levy taxes. Tariffs are taxes. That legal reality alone should end the fantasy that these policies are something else.

Because for years we were told China would pay.

We were told foreign countries would foot the bill.

We were told tariffs were “beautiful.”

They weren’t.

A February 2026 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York confirmed what economists have said from the beginning: over 90% of the tariffs were passed on to American companies and consumers.

That means they were paid here.

By us.

And in Louisiana, that matters more than almost anywhere else.

Louisiana is one of the most trade-exposed states in America. We export roughly $87 billion in goods annually, making us the fourth-largest exporting state, and exports account for about 27% of our GDP. When global trade slows, we don’t feel it second — we feel it first.

Independent economic modeling estimates tariffs impose hundreds of millions of dollars in added annual costs on Louisiana businesses because of our heavy import and export exposure.

And we are already seeing the strain.

Louisiana’s GDP has underperformed regional peers. Trade disruptions hit our ports, our agriculture sector, our small manufacturers, and our supply chains. During the last trade war, U.S. soybean exports to China collapsed by roughly 75% as China shifted purchases to Brazil. Brazil expanded acreage, built infrastructure, and locked in long-term supply relationships.

Markets lost are not easily regained.

The damage was not limited to China. Tariffs were imposed and threatened against long-standing allies — Canada, the European Union, Japan. Trade policy was announced by text message and social media post, sometimes reversed just as quickly. That unpredictability rattled supply chains and made the United States look unreliable to trading partners who had relied on decades of stable rules.

When global partners no longer trust the consistency of American policy, they diversify away from us. Louisiana — a state that depends on global trade — absorbs that loss first.

Farm stress rose nationwide during that period, and the federal government had to issue $28 billion in farm bailout payments to stabilize the sector. If tariffs were strengthening agriculture, bailouts would not have been necessary.

Small businesses are squeezed hardest. They pay more for imported equipment, steel, machinery, and materials. Unlike multinational corporations, they can’t easily absorb the shock or relocate supply chains. And when corporations receive tariff exemptions or refunds, there is no guarantee those savings are passed back to consumers. They protect margins.

Meanwhile, everyday people pay higher prices.

National estimates show tariffs cost the average household roughly $1,000 per year. Applied proportionally to Louisiana’s roughly 1.7 million households, that suggests families here could be absorbing well over $1.5 billion annually in added costs.

That is a massive hidden tax in one of the lowest-income states in America.

And we are layering it on top of Louisiana’s already punishing tax structure. We have the highest combined sales tax in the nation — the result of cutting income taxes for corporations and high earners while shifting the burden onto working families. Utilities are rising. Insurance is rising. Inflation has already strained budgets.

Now we are piling federal tariff taxes on top of that.

And Governor Jeff Landry is praising it.

Not one of Louisiana’s statewide Republican officials — and not the Republican legislators who hold a supermajority in Baton Rouge — are calling this out. Instead, they are defending it. They are celebrating it. Many are already positioning themselves for midterm campaigns centered on protecting Trump.

They are choosing Trump over Louisiana.

And Louisiana families are the ones absorbing the cost.

Tariffs may raise about $132 billion nationally in a given year, but that does little to meaningfully reduce a multi-trillion-dollar federal deficit. It does not rebuild supply chains overnight. It does not restore lost export markets.

It simply makes things more expensive — and makes America less predictable as a trading partner.

A tariff is a tax.

When more than 90% of it is paid by American businesses and consumers, it is not an economic weapon against foreign governments. It is a tax on your grocery bill, your farm inputs, your building materials, and your small business inventory.

And in Louisiana — where incomes are lower and trade exposure is higher — we feel that tax more than most.

Louisiana cannot afford it.

What can you do to help change Louisiana?

WTH Happened This Week with Danielle & Dustin - 2.13.26

Dustin Granger — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 20:37:50 GMT

What can you do to help change Louisiana?

Available for iOS and Android

No to Them All (Part 2)

Dustin Granger — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:38:14 GMT

(Attention: I made a mistake on the amendment ballot numbers in my original post, corrections included below)

In March of 2025, Louisiana voters did something powerful:
we said no.

No to a set of far-right Project 2025–style permanent amendments to our Constitution. Amendments that created kangaroo courts (Amendment 1), a tax-code bait and switch (Amendment 2), expanded the incarceration of children (Amendment 3), and rigged judicial elections to lock in partisan power (Amendment 4).

And this wasn’t a fringe response. A broad coalition of Democrats, independents, and Republicans rejected those amendments together — urban and rural voters, Black and white voters, parents, teachers, faith leaders, and small-business owners — united by a shared understanding that permanently rewriting the Constitution to concentrate power and strip safeguards was a step too far.

The message was clear.

Now, the same project is back — narrower in form, but identical in purpose.

Below is a clear-eyed preview of the five constitutional amendments on the May ballot, and why voters should reject 4 of them — again.

Amendment 1: Politicizing Civil Service

Louisiana’s civil service system protects roughly 60,000 state workers — nurses, health inspectors, engineers, child-welfare caseworkers, environmental scientists, biologists, auditors, state troopers, university staff, IT specialists, and many others who keep the state functioning. These employees are hired on merit, not loyalty, and they can’t be fired for refusing illegal or unethical orders.

This amendment allows the Legislature to strip those protections away job category by job category, turning professional public servants into at-will political employees. Once a position is reclassified, the independent Civil Service Commission cannot restore it.

That’s a one-way door.

Civil service exists to prevent patronage, corruption, and political purges. Weakening it doesn’t make government more efficient. It makes it more political — and less competent.

Amendment 2: St. George and Segregation by Design

This amendment allows the St. George area to create its own school system, separate from East Baton Rouge Parish.

St. George is a newly formed city carved out of the wealthiest, predominantly white parts of the parish. Its separation leaves behind a poorer, heavily Black school district while taking local tax base and political power with it.

Supporters call this “local control.” In practice, it’s segregation through finance.

State education dollars follow students into the new district. Local property wealth follows the new city. East Baton Rouge Parish loses revenue but keeps legacy costs — school debt, aging facilities, retiree obligations, and high-need students.

St. George, meanwhile, receives direct state funding through the Minimum Foundation Program on top of its local wealth. That creates a double advantage: more money per student and fewer high-cost obligations.

The result is higher per-student costs statewide, deeper inequality locally, and a modern version of segregation — not enforced by law, but by resource extraction.

This isn’t local control. It’s disinvestment — and it deserves a no vote.

Amendment 3: Raiding Education Trust Funds to Avoid Real Funding

This amendment liquidates long-standing education trust funds — including funds created from offshore oil revenues and the tobacco settlement — and redirects the money to pay down teacher pension debt.

Supporters say this will free up money for teacher raises. That’s misleading.

Permanent teacher pay is supposed to be funded through the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) — the formula that equalizes pay across districts so a teacher in a poor parish isn’t punished for where they live. This amendment bypasses the MFP entirely.

Instead, raises depend on pension “savings,” which vary by district. Wealthier districts with larger payrolls benefit more. Poorer districts benefit less. Inequality widens.

And once these trust funds are gone, they’re gone forever — money originally set aside for classrooms, early childhood programs, and instructional support used to patch over chronic underfunding while the state refuses to raise new revenue.

We are selling off our children’s future to avoid asking corporations to contribute more.

Amendment 4: The Corporate Inventory Tax Shell Game

For nearly three decades, Louisiana has had a strange compromise baked into its tax system.

Local governments tax business inventory — the goods sitting in warehouses, refineries, plants, and distribution centers. Parishes rely on that revenue to fund schools, sheriffs, roads, and basic services. Corporations, especially large industrial ones, hated the tax and pushed to eliminate it from the Constitution for decades.

Parishes refused. They needed the money.

So around 1998, the state struck a deal: keep the inventory tax in place locally, but have the state reimburse corporations for what they paid through a tax credit. That subsidy eventually grew to roughly $500 million a year — a massive corporate giveaway, written into statutory law, not the Constitution.

Recently, the Legislature eliminated that subsidy. On its face, that could have been a rare moment of corporate accountability. But that’s not what’s happening here.

Instead of ending the subsidy and letting corporations absorb the cost, the strategy now is to put parishes under pressure.

Without the state reimbursement, inventory-heavy industries face large local tax bills. Those industries will do what they always do: lean on parish officials, threaten relocation, and point to neighboring parishes that don’t tax inventory. The result is a race to the bottom.

This amendment is the workaround.

It gives parishes the option to eliminate the inventory tax themselves, sweetened with a one-time payment from the state’s rainy day fund. Once the tax is gone, it’s hard to restore. And the amendment locks the system into the Constitution, preventing a future statewide fix.

Over time, parishes with heavy industry will lose major revenue and be forced to raise sales taxes and residential property taxes to fill the gap.

This isn’t tax reform. It’s a giant corporate tax cut in disguise, shifting the cost from corporations to local communities.

If this amendment fails, the GOP supermajority will likely reinstate the subsidy with a simple majority vote. They shouldn’t. The right answer isn’t reviving the giveaway — it’s refusing this shell game altogether.

Amendment 5: Let Judges Stay Longer

This amendment raises the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 75. I am currently neutral on this amendment but re-analyzing. Proponents say this amendment helps female judges who usually attain a judgeship later in life than men.

The Pattern Matters

Taken individually, each amendment has a sales pitch. Taken together, the pattern is obvious:

Corporate tax cuts locked into the Constitution
Resulting higher tax burdens shifted onto communities
Worker protections weakened
Education trust funds drained
School systems fragmented along lines of wealth and race
Future lawmakers blocked from fixing the damage

This is the same agenda voters rejected in March 2025 — just broken into pieces and sent back to the ballot.

And that’s why the answer, again, should be no.

A Call to Do This Together — Again

What happened in March wasn’t partisan. It was civic.

A broad, multiracial coalition of Louisianans — Democrats, Republicans, and independents — looked at these amendments and said: this doesn’t add up.

We need that same coalition again.

Read the amendments. Talk to your neighbors. Share this with people who don’t follow politics every day. And when you vote in May, remember:

The Constitution is not a scratch pad for bad policy.

We stopped it once. We can stop it again.

What can you do to help change Louisiana?